The Nick Of Time Part 14

Mihalik and Cheryl trudged southward through the meadow. They had picked that direction because it was generally downhill; there was nothing to see in the other directions except the gently waving red flowers. "If we come to a yellow brick road," threatened Mihalik, "I'm going to give up. I'm going to wait for Glinda to come take me by the hand. I'm not going to budge an inch. I've had it."

Cheryl was surprised by his vehemence. "I don't understand, honey," she said. "I thought you liked The Wizard of Oz."

"If I never see that movie again, it will be just fine with me." He felt grumpy, and it actually cheered him a little to crush the innocent poppies underfoot. They didn't make him sleepy, and no snowstorm came to rescue them from an evil witch's spell. It was just a field of red poppies; there was no magic here at all. Mihalik was silently thankful for small favors.

"We used to watch it every time it came on, even though it was made back in the old 2-D days," said Cheryl. "Remember how excited we were when they put the 'Jitterbug' sequence back in?"

"Yeah," said Mihalik.

"So what's wrong?"

"It doesn't bother you that for the last few universes everybody we run into seems to have The Wizard of Oz on the brain? Doesn't it seem kind of coincidental or strange, or even ominous to you?"

"How could Shirley Temple be ominous, Frank?"

Mihalik stopped walking; Cheryl went on a few steps before she realized that he wasn't keeping up.

She turned around and looked at him questioningly. "There you go again," he said. "Shirley Temple. I told you before: it wasn't Shirley Temple, it was Judy Garland. And what was that phony stuff you told Dr. Waters about Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson being in the movie? He never had anything to do with it."

"Judy Garland?" said Cheryl, laughing. "Frank, try to make sense. That isn't even logical. Dorothy is a little girl in the book, maybe five or six years old. When the movie was made, Judy Garland would have been in her late teens, her young budding b.r.e.a.s.t.s thrusting against her childish gingham dress, her ripening hips swaying suggestively as she pa.s.sed fearfully through the haunted forest, her full, sensuous lips--"

"That's enough, Cheryl. My G.o.d, Shirley Temple would have been just awful. She would have made the picture so sweet you wouldn't be able to stand it. At least Judy Garland had a real voice. I can't imagine Shirley Temple trying to sing 'Over the Rainbow.'"

"Sing what, Frank?"

"'Over the Rainbow.'" Cheryl looked at him blankly. "You remember that, which wasn't in the movie, but you don't remember Shirley Temple tap-dancing with Bill Robinson and Buddy Ebsen by the river, singing 'No Way to Stay the Day and Play?'"

Mihalik smacked his forehead with one hand. "Buddy Ebsen? You mean Davy Crockett's pal? What would he be doing in The Wizard of Oz?"

"Playing the Tin Woodman. He was one of the best all-around hoofeurs in Hollywood, Frank, and he made a great team with Bill Robinson. And Shirley Temple was a pretty fair little hoofeuse, for being only eleven. That's a lot closer to Dorothy's age according to the book, you know."

Mihalik began walking beside her again. They continued the argument as they went down the blossom-covered hillside; they came to a stream at the bottom, and followed it until they saw what were unmistakably the towers of a futuristic city on the horizon. They stared at it for a moment, then looked at each other. "Don't say--" said Mihalik.

"There's Emerald City! Oh, we're almost there, at last, at last!"

"--say it," finished Mihalik glumly.

Cheryl laughed at him. "Don't take it so seriously, Frank. I was just joking."

"Buddy Ebsen, huh? You don't remember Jack Haley at all?"

"Who's Jack Haley, Frank?" asked Cheryl innocently.

"The Tin Woodman!" cried Mihalik in frustration. "Look, MGM never could have gotten Shirley Temple for that picture. She was under contract to somebody else, Paramount or somebody."

"Studios traded stars all the time. I think MGM was going to let Paramount use Carole Lombard for a couple of pictures in return. Lombard didn't get around to making those movies for almost ten years, as it turned out, but they were great. First she did--"

"Carole Lombard died only three or four years after The Wizard of Oz was made," said Mihalik coldly. "In a plane crash."

Now Cheryl looked shocked. "You're thinking of somebody else, Frank. You're thinking of Will Rogers or somebody."

"You're telling me that I have Will Rogers confused with Carole Lombard?"

"Carole Lombard didn't die in a plane crash. She and Clark Gable became one of the best-loved teams in movie history. They made a whole series of wonderful comedies together. They had the best writers in the business working for them, back when movies were still made in Hollywood. They appeared on Broadway in a George S. Kaufman play written just for them, called The Merry Whitlow, and it made an even better film. S. J. Perelman adapted The Taming of the Shrew for them and called it Wedded Blitz; that was in 1940, and the war was going on in Europe, see? Then about 1947 Lombard got an Academy Award for her dramatic acting, as Daisy in The Great Gatsby with Tyrone Power."

"Carole Lombard died in 1942. Tyrone Power never played Gatsby, and I've never heard of those other pictures."

Cheryl only shrugged. "I can't help that, Frank. We all have our little areas of ignorance."

"G.o.dd.a.m.n it, Cheryl," said Mihalik angrily, "I may be ignorant, but I know about movies. I know a lot about movies, Cheryl, because thick-skulled brutes like me are too stupid to read books, but we like to watch movies. The flickering light soothes us."

"Now, don't get sarcastic, Frank," she said.

"Why the h.e.l.l are you telling me all this nonsense for, then?"

Cheryl folded her arms across her chest and turned away from him. "It isn't nonsense, it's the truth.

Why would I make all this up? Just because you can't remember who played Dorothy.... You are a thick-skulled idiot sometimes. You move your lips when you read. You move your lips when you watch movies, too. I've seen you do it."

Mihalik stomped on toward the distant city, muttering under his breath.

"Frank?" called Cheryl, suddenly lonely and afraid of their quarrel.

He stopped and turned to face her. "Carole Lombard died in 1942," he said.

"She did not. She was married to Clark Gable until he died, and then a few years later she marriedSizzlin' Sid McCoy. She introduced the stories on Carole Lombard Presents on television for years.

Then she divorced McCoy and wrote two volumes of autobiography. She retired and died when she was in her mid-sixties, I think. Don't you remember?"

"Who the h.e.l.l was Sizzlin' Sid McCoy?" asked Mihalik in a dangerously quiet voice.

Cheryl squinted at him. "Only the greatest pitcher in the history of baseball, that's all. Don't pretend you've--"

"Never heard of him." He shook his head. "Come on, we want to get to the city before dark."

They walked in silence, each thinking over what the other had said. It seemed absurd that either one was inventing all these names and dates, but the only possible explanation was too unpleasant to consider. It took a long time before Mihalik found the courage to express it. "Cheryl," he said at last in a profoundly sad voice, "You're not the real Cheryl."

"I'm real, all right," she said hotly, "but it's obvious that you aren't my Frank."

"You're from the wrong universe. You sure as h.e.l.l didn't come from mine."

She looked at him in wonder. "I may not have come from your universe, all right; but that doesn't give you the right to call it 'wrong.' It was always 'right' to me."

He snorted. "And this from a woman who thinks Shirley Temple played Dorothy in--"

Cheryl began to cry. She just stopped in her tracks, lost the impetus of her outrage, and fell apart emotionally. The long adventure had all been too much for her. She was finally exhausted, finally pushed just a little too far. She sank slowly to the ground, put her face in her hands, and sobbed.

Mihalik didn't know what to do. This was always a difficult situation for him. A crying woman was more intimidating to him than a dozen murderous Finnish pirates. It's the way heroes are supposed to be, and Mihalik was made from the genuine material; he was helpless around hysterical women. "There, there," he said. It didn't seem to help.

"What are we going to do?" asked Cheryl, gasping the words between sobs. She looked up at him with reddened, puffy eyes.

"Do? We'll do what we always do -- we'll keep on until we get where we're going. Come on, old girl, the sun's getting low in the sky."

"Oh, Frank," she said, drying her tears and sniffing, "you're so dependable." He just smiled down at her and offered her a hand.

All's Fair....

As they drew nearer to the city, it became increasingly obvious to Mihalik and Cheryl that it was not, in fact, a city. The buildings were, however, disturbingly familiar, disgustingly familiar. The most unusual aspects of the skyline were the tall, skinny pyramid and the big ball; that is to say, the Trylon and the Perisphere. It was the 1939 New York World's Fair, the World of Tomorrow, for Peace and Freedom and All That Jazz. It was missing only one important thing: New York City, which ought to have surrounded the Fair like a fist around a penny.

Encircling the Fair there were only endless meadows of flowers -- the poppy fields Mihalik and Cheryl had crossed, tulips, daffodils, geraniums and poinsettias, marigolds, morning glories, all without regard to season or climate, all blossoming together in a bewildering display of color and scent. From the edge of the Fair, Mihalik and Cheryl looked back over these fields of flowers, wondering how the Fair had been torn loose from its secure moorings in 1939 and brought here. Wherever here was.

"Remind me to pick up another pickle pin for Ray," said Mihalik, as they went through a turnstile and found their way to the reflecting pool on Const.i.tution Mall. They sat down on a bench and watched people going by. Neither felt like talking for a long while.

At last, Cheryl noticed something. "These people," she said slowly, "they're not dressed in the same kind of clothing the people in 1939 wore."

Mihalik looked closely at a man nearby, who had on gold pantaloons and a green vest. That's all, no shirt, stockings, or shoes. "They sure look odd," said Mihalik.

"Well, we're not in 1939, that's for sure," said Cheryl. "They had a city around this thing back then. All right, we're here. That Captain Hartstein brought us here for some reason. Now it's up to us to figure out why. There must be some clue here that will get us home -- I mean, get each of us home to his or her right home. That is--"

"I know what you meant, Frank," said Cheryl. She stood up. "I see something over there that you're not going to like. You're not going to like it even more than you didn't like finding this Fair here."

"Maybe I don't want to know about it, Cheryl," said Mihalik. "Sometimes I'm better off just not knowing about certain things."

"Yes, but this is an important detail. Our whole future may ride on this one unsettling little incongruity."

Mihalik thought for a few seconds, chewing his lip. "I'll tell you what," he said at last, "why don't we get something to eat first? Maybe ride a few rides, go see something like The Story of Diphtheria in the Medicine and Public Health Building, take our minds off things for a little while, and then, when we're in a good mood and relaxed and rested, then you can tell me all about this thing I don't want to know about.

Maybe a week from next Tuesday. For sure."

Cheryl laughed as if he were making a joke. "Ha ha, Frank. If I didn't know you better, I'd think you'd left your hero-training back in the trenches."

"There's always the danger of getting too much of a good thing," he said. "I've really enjoyed pitting my talents and abilities against the meanest obstacles the universe can think up. I really have. I think I've grown as a person on account of all our adventures; but I could use a vacation, you know? Too much of this and you start to lose your fine edge. All work and no play, right? Why don't we get something to eat and ride a few rides--"

"You already said that, Frank," said Cheryl impatiently. Around them in the deepening dusk, the lights of the Fair began to blink on. Colored spotlights lit the fountains. Cheryl took one of Mihalik's hands gently and pointed it toward a large, white marble-faced building, immensely tall and square and clearly out of place in the Art Deco environs. "What's that?" she asked. "It wasn't there before."

"That's where the Heinz Dome is supposed to be, d.a.m.n it. Ray's going to be sore about this. We better not tell him that we lost the pin and then couldn't get another one. Actually, both Rays will be upset, mine and yours. We both have to keep our lips--"

"Frank!" cried Cheryl. "Forget the G.o.dd.a.m.n pickle pin! What the h.e.l.l is that building?"

"It looks familiar, too," he said thoughtfully.

"It looks--"

"Oh, h.e.l.l," he murmured. "It's the Agency Building. From London, remember? When we thought we were back home the first time."

They looked at each other. They didn't like the fact that the Agency Building had sprouted in the midst of the 1939 New York World's Fair, which didn't seem to be in 1939 anymore; but it was definitely something to be investigated, and they were getting tired and hungry, and they figured they might as well find out what they were up against this time. There was no point in delaying matters. They walked up the marble stairs to the row of gla.s.s doors.

A man dressed in the silver and blue of the Agency came out of the middle door and held out his hands to them. He was smiling broadly and his crinkly blue eyes were twinkling merrily. "Frank and Cheryl, here at last!" he said happily. "Welcome, welcome to your fate!"

"Thanks," said Mihalik grumpily, "but we've been welcomed before -- several times -- and our fates haven't been all that terrific up to now."

"All that's going to change, you'll see," said the man, never losing a millimeter of his enthusiastic smile.

Mihalik could tell that smiling was what this man was paid for; he was a real professional, and he was good at it, too.

"Is Dr. Waters here or what?" asked Cheryl.

The man waggled an index finger back and forth. "All in good time, my dear, all in good time," he said. "You'll have your chance to ask questions later. I'm sure you'd like to freshen up a little, relax in a hot bath, put on some clean clothing." It was a wonderful suggestion. Both Mihalik and Cheryl realized that it had been a long time since they'd had a chance to wash, and as for their clothes, well, it was time to bail out of them altogether and into whatever their host would provide. "Thanks a lot, Mr.--"

"You can call me Bwana," said their new friend, smiling. "No connection with the ancient Swahili word."

Mihalik looked at Cheryl. "'Call Me Bwana.' Wasn't that a picture--"

"Bob Hope and Hope Lange," she said. "1963. Anita Ekberg was in it, too."

"Bob Hope and Edie Adams," said Mihalik coldly. "Anita Ekberg was in it, too."

"Hope Lange."

"Edie Adams."

"Stop, stop, you're both wrong!" said Bwana, chuckling. "It was Bob Hope and Suzy Christenson."

"Who?" asked Mihalik.

"Who?" asked Cheryl.

"Never mind. And it wasn't Anita Ekberg, it was Diana Dors. Come along, we have a lot to do."

Mihalik jerked his thumb at the plump Agency man. "How'd he know we were coming?"

Bwana looked back over his shoulder and smiled. "This is the future, folks. We know everything here."

"You should have guessed that, Frank," said Cheryl.

He didn't bother to reply. "Hope Lange," he muttered under his breath. "Suzy Christenson." Then he repeated a phrase Bwana had used -- "All in good time, my dear, all in good time" -- but Mihalik spoke it in the high threatening voice of the Wicked Witch of the West. He shook his head in resignation and followed Cheryl into the building.

The Unexpected Reintroduction of Social Stratification They were led to separate suites where cheerful servants, all clad in blue and silver, helped them undress, run baths, dry themselves with big fluffy towels, and slip into fresh new blue and silver outfits.

Cheryl found this luxurious and wonderful; Mihalik found it fussy and annoying. Their suites adjoined, and when Cheryl had made the transition from weary, travel-stained adventurer to squeaky-clean guest of the Agency, she rapped on the communicating door.

"Yo," called Mihalik.

"Are you decent?"

"Let it be a surprise," he said. "Come on in."

Cheryl opened the door and came into Mihalik's sitting room. He was sitting. "What do we do now?"